‘It sounds like a real spoilt-brat thing to say but I left because I wanted to do lots of different things,’ says 32-year-old media all-rounder Clemency Burton-Hill.

She’s talking about the decision to leave her first job out of university – as a writer at Vogue magazine, one most wannabe journos would be desperate to get. ‘I realised working full-time in one place wasn’t going to be for me.’

Burton-Hill, daughter of former BBC arts supremo Humphrey Burton, already had her careers as a violinist and actress to fall back on. She’d appeared on football soap Dream Team before completing her English degree at Cambridge University and went on to appear in TV shows Party Animals and Hustle.

She now presents classical music station Radio 3’s breakfast show and has written second novel All The Things You Are.

‘I feel like I’ve never done a day’s work in my life because I’ve loved everything I’ve done – but then I’ve worked my arse off for more than ten years,’ says Burton-Hill. ‘Some people think these jobs fall out of the sky but they take a lot of hard work.

Rupert Evans and Clemency Burton-Hill in The Palace (Picture: ITV)

‘Everything I do is connected by an interest in people and a desire to tell stories. Novel writing, journalism, presenting, music, acting – all have that at their heart.’

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Burton-Hill’s new literary endeavour is a love story between two Americans – a woman with a Jewish background and a man of Middle Eastern origin – set in New York and Israel. It was inspired by her work over the past decade with music programmes in Israel and Palestine.

‘Participating in the Palestine Bach Festival in 2004 was a turning point in my life,’ she says. She taught and performed with young musicians and met two boys, one Israeli, one Palestinian, who’d become good friends but who couldn’t see each other once the programme finished.

‘They lived 15 minutes apart but after the summer, they wouldn’t be allowed to continue their friendship,’ she says. ‘At the time, I thought: “What if that’s two people who fall in love?” It’s no distance at all geographically but an insurmountable hurdle on the ground.’

Clemency Burton-Hill’s new book is a love story set in New York and Israel (Picture: supplied)

She’s also performed with Daniel Barenboim’s West-Eastern Divan Orchestra, which brings Israeli and Arab musicians together. ‘When I was a kid, I moaned about going to violin lessons, so it’s very humbling to see a child in that part of the world who might have to wait at a checkpoint for three hours to go to his or her violin lesson,’ she says.

While Burton-Hill is enthusiastic about the work she’s done in the Middle East, she says she has no illusions about the situation there. ‘But the glimmer of light is that people on both sides want peace and can empathise with each other,’ she says. ‘I just wish the politicians had more empathy and the international community did a little bit more.’

She lived in New York for a couple of years with her husband, James Roscoe, who worked at the United Nations as a diplomat. The pair are in London now and he’s the communications secretary to the Queen. And they recently celebrated the arrival of their first child, Tom.

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Her time in New York seems to have left her with a renewed enthusiasm for the British arts scene. ‘Living there, you realise that without public subsidy, the arts become less interesting and fewer risks are taken,’ she says. ‘When I was there, 11 of the Tony Award-winners were British and they all started their careers in subsidised theatre.’

Clemency Burton Hill and Shelley Conn in Party Animals (Picture: BBC)

Burton-Hill points out government funding into the arts creates jobs and stimulates the economy. ‘It’s a difficult climate,’ she says, ‘but arts are being produced at an astonishing level in Britain and we jeopardise that at our peril.’

She also believes media coverage of the arts plays an important role. ‘There are cuts all the time to newspapers – arts gets less space,’ she says. ‘But coverage is important as it keeps arts in the discourse. If no one talks about the arts, it becomes even harder to justify paying for it.’

As a classical music devotee, she highlights the Proms. ‘There isn’t a single nation who wouldn’t want to have the Proms,’ she says, ‘and you can see some of the greatest musicians on the planet for £5, which costs less than a pint in some pubs.’

‘The way the debate is framed is often frustrating,’ she adds, pointing to the argument that £1 spent on arts funding means £1 less for other public services, ‘because the arts needs to be accessible to everyone in the country. It’s a huge part of who we are as a nation – to tell stories and have access to experiences that challenge us, make us think and connect to other people.’